(n.) A play on words which have the same sound but different meanings; an expression in which two different applications of a word present an odd or ludicrous idea; a kind of quibble or equivocation.
(v. i.) To make puns, or a pun; to use a word in a double sense, especially when the contrast of ideas is ludicrous; to play upon words; to quibble.
(v. t.) To persuade or affect by a pun.
Example Sentences:
(1) Go Kings go!” The pun-filled press release issued by De Blasio also helpfully included the lyrics to Sinatra’s and Newman’s classic tunes, in case anyone had forgotten.
(2) Bad pun aside, investors are concerned that the company's high growth-rates are tapering.
(3) January 12, 2016 Shorten hastily responded to that debate on Twitter with a pun-laden non-answer, saying: “Cos you asked … my favourite lettuce is one that doesn’t have a 15 per cent GST on it.” Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) Cos you asked @workmanalice - my favourite lettuce is one that doesn't have a 15 per cent GST on it.
(4) The following day, politicians and eurocrats began scrambling to hammer out a larger rescue package for Greece: 28 April 2010 Photograph: Guardian That was the time when puns about Acropolis Now, and ‘making a drachma out of a crisis’ were in vogue: Greek debt crisis, 28 April 2010 Photograph: Guardian But there wasn’t much time for jokes.
(5) Hemingway’s daughter, Corey, is in a marquee at the back of the site, painting a teddy bear onto some MDF, in the pursuit of a Teddy Boy pun that either doesn’t work, or I don’t get, but it looks great.
(6) The outcome of 53 patients operated on either for posttraumatic ulnar neuropathy (PUN) or non-traumatic cubital tunnel syndrome (CTS) was reviewed after 3 years follow-up.
(7) In a report called "Un-Finnished Business" (you can always rely on the rating agencies for a bad pun), the analysts write: We think the risks to growth in 2012 and 2013 are rising.
(8) In all experiments, supplementing TRP-deficient diets with D- and L-TRP significantly increased feed intake, rate and efficiency of gain and decreased plasma urea N (PUN).
(9) Systemic LH, FSH, glucagon, cortisol, PUN, NEFA, estradiol, and testosterone were not affected by insulin or level of feeding.
(10) The first of April is normally a day of frothy fun, where newspapers and brands compete to produce the best jokes and the worst puns to fool their readers.
(11) The unfortunate design hasn’t gone unnoticed and attracted puns galore when it was posted on Reddit over the weekend .
(12) Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian The signs of wealth are everywhere, from the luxury gated village of the Pun Hlaing Golf Estate to the towers around swimming pools of Star City , both projects of the Pun empire.
(13) Emad Hajjaj, a popular Jordanian cartoonist, drew an elderly Palestinian woman by her sagging UN tent saying – in an untranslatable pun on the words “Charlie” and the colloquial Arabic “I have been” – that she had lived as a refugee for the 67 years since the creation of Israel in 1948.
(14) During the war years, his snappy, escapist films brought joy to audiences on the home front, while he was the only Hope (puns on his surname have always been de rigueur ) for thousands of troops overseas whom he entertained on his various tours from 1941.
(15) Second, the yuck factor: isn't it just beyond tasteful (no pun intended) for a woman to put her nipple into another woman's baby's mouth?
(16) The report tackles a number of issues which, excuse the pun, have been ‘bubbling’ up over the last year.
(17) Sorry and all that, but the pun was too good to use: Genre?
(18) Was The Wine Show supposed to be a deliberately awful pun on The One Show?
(19) The comedian Rob Auton, 30, has seen off competition from acclaimed pun-slingers including Tim Vine and Gary Delaney to pick up TV channel Dave's annual award for one-liners at the fringe.
(20) An experiment was conducted with 36 crossbred finishing pigs (18 male castrates and 18 females) to evaluate the effect of bromocriptine implants on growth, feed intake, feed efficiency, plasma urea nitrogen (PUN) and carcass characteristics.
Quibble
Definition:
(n.) A shift or turn from the point in question; a trifling or evasive distinction; an evasion; a cavil.
(n.) A pun; a low conceit.
(v. i.) To evade the point in question by artifice, play upon words, caviling, or by raising any insignificant or impertinent question or point; to trifle in argument or discourse; to equivocate.
(v. i.) To pun; to practice punning.
Example Sentences:
(1) And please don’t quibble about whether you have any direct lineage to the architects of racism.
(2) Quibbling over whether fashion is more or less important than art is just as pointless as questioning whether or not it is art.
(3) And with four years as her nation’s chief diplomat on the world stage under her belt, Mrs Clinton’s personal gravitas is even harder to quibble with than it might have been in 2008.
(4) Dammers learned that Mandela had just one quibble with the Special AKA song.
(5) Other quibbles: some iPhone apps don't scale so brilliantly to such a large screen.
(6) To quibble further, one might say, is to simply argue about hinges.
(7) I find myself wondering how far I should go to say that FGM is the slicing off on a conscious young girl with no anaesthetic of her clitoris and labia... “This is a quibble about a couple of stitches and it is a complete distraction.” Mr Justice Sweeney, in summing up to the jury on Wednesday, said everyone accepted Dharmasena had saved the life of the woman’s baby in an emergency delivery on 24 November, 2012.
(8) "While I do quibble with the ethics (or lack of ethics) in posting the Salinger stories, they look to be true transcripts of the originals and match my own copies."
(9) You have explained how you have got caught up in this thing, you've explained your motives: I don't want to quibble about any of that.
(10) Even the US administration, which has repeatedly played up the uncertainties in climate science, has not quibbled with the inclusion of statements such as "human activities since 1750 have very likely (>90%) exerted a net warming influence on climate", and "further emissions of greenhouse gases would be expected to change the climate of the 21st century".
(11) No one could quibble with the report’s section on geopolitics.
(12) Certainly, some will quibble as to how much blame the federal government should receive for this economic downturn.
(13) But there's a bigger problem with the politics of idleness than quibbling over definitions.
(14) The next question is also on inflation but is a bit quibbly: what if inflation is like, you know, really big?
(15) Oh, there are quibbles, so many quibbles, some unfortunately presentational.
(16) Homewatt.co.uk sells LED bulbs and if you don't think they are suitable, use its seven-day no-quibble returns policy to get your money back.
(17) And for the hopefuls lining up outside the passport office: thou shalt not quibble about freedom of speech.
(18) But the deeper flaw was a complacent assumption that Labour was the moral choice, and that people would realise as much if only their misguided quibbles about public spending could be neutralised.
(19) Some quibbled about the methodology, but, taken at face value, the test yielded good and bad results.
(20) It's an understandable stance, since to quibble over the reasons why 15 million died in the first world war may well look unseemly, particularly for a politician hoping that his party replaces Gove's as government next year, but it doesn't have much of the lion about it.